The Coward and the Tsar

Bronislava “Slava” Ignatova

The steel blade in Kirill’s hand caught the dim crimson light pulsing from my chest, casting a sickly red glare across his pale face.

He took another step toward me, his heavy leather boots crunching into the slush. His hazel eyes, the same eyes I had spent my entire life looking up to with soft, foolish devotion, were wide, fixed on the shimmering streaks of platinum silver that had just bled through my raven black hair.

“Slava…” he breathed again, his voice cracking with a terrifying mix of shock and a sudden, dark possessiveness. “What is this? What did you do to yourself?”

“Stay away from me,” I rasped. My voice sounded stripped raw, scraped to the bone by the black, oily poison still trickling from the corners of my lips.

I dragged myself backward through the frozen mud, my elbows scraping against sharp stones. My whole body felt like a furnace that had been stoked with live coals. The silver laced wolfsbane Matrena had fed me for eighteen years was almost completely purged, but the sheer violently sudden awakening of my Blood Alpha lineage had left my muscles trembling, utterly exhausted, and bleeding from the inside out.

Kirill took another step, raising his blade. “I am your Alpha, Slava. You are going to tell me what kind of trickery this is. You are coming back to the pack…”

“I am not your anything!” I spat, blood mixing with my words as I glared up at him. “You rejected me! You threw me into the ice to freeze while you took Eva’s fake mark! You don’t get to command me anymore!”

A flash of genuine rage crossed Kirill’s face, pulling his features into a cruel, ugly mask. “You think that Tsar can save you? You think you can just run away into the night with a foreign monster?” He raised the sword higher, stepping straight into the pool of warm, melted slush around my knees. “I will break your legs and drag you back in iron chains before I let you shame my name.”

Before he could take another step, a sudden, unnatural static filled the air.

It wasn’t the sound of the storm above the ravine. It was a low, heavy vibration that seemed to rise straight out of the dark earth beneath us.

The crimson light radiating from my skin, the unfiltered, raw signature of a true Blood Alpha, wasn’t just melting the ice around my body. It was broadcasting a signal. A sweet, intoxicating, highly concentrated scent of divine blood was pouring out into the night, riding the wind out of the gorge like smoke from a freshly lit fire.

To a normal wolf, it was an aura of terrifying authority. But to the feral, starved, rabid beasts roaming the Siberian waste?

It was an irresistible beacon.

A low, bone chilling growl echoed from the shadows behind Kirill.

Kirill froze. His sword hand trembled as he slowly turned his head toward the dark mouth of the ravine.

Out from the jagged rocks, three massive, nightmare like shapes stepped into the dim crimson glow.

They weren’t ordinary wolves. They were wild, feral rogues, beasts who had long ago lost their human minds to the blood lust, their bodies mutated by years of eating rot and dark magic. Their fur was matted, patchy, and stained with old, black gore. Their ribs pressed against thick, scarred hides, and their eyes didn’t glow with normal wolf fire; they burned with a mindless, rabid, blood red madness.

The lead rogue was easily seven feet long at the shoulder, its lower jaw half torn away, black yellow tinged saliva dripping onto the snow.

It didn’t look at Kirill. It didn’t care about the broadsword in his hand.

All three beasts turned their glowing red eyes directly onto me.

They sniffed the air, taking in the rich, divine scent of my newly unsealed Blood Alpha marrow mixing with the black poison on the snow. A frantic, desperate whining sound escaped the lead beast’s throat, a horrific sound of absolute, ravenous hunger.

“Goddess above…” Kirill whispered, his face draining of what little color it had left. He took a hasty step back, his boots slipping on the slick ice, his Alpha posture collapsing into sheer, unadulterated terror.

“Kirill…” I choked out, my fingers clawing into the frozen slush as I tried to force my limbs to move. My body was completely spent; the purging of the toxins had left me completely paralyzed, unable to even lift my head. “Kirill, help…”

Kirill looked down at me. Then he looked at the three giant, rabid monsters creeping toward us, their fangs bared, their deep growls rattling the canyon walls.

He didn’t draw a battle stance. He didn’t step in front of me to protect a member of his former pack.

The future Alpha of the North Ridge lowered his sword, turned on his heel, and ran.

He scrambled up the steep, icy embankment of the ravine, digging his boots into the mud in a desperate, cowardly panic, abandoning me to the dark without a second thought.

A harsh, bitter laugh tore from my throat, turning into a painful cough that left me gasping for air. Of course he ran. Why did I ever expect anything else?

The three rogues didn’t even bother to chase him. He was just meat.

I was power.

The lead beast took a slow, heavy step forward, its massive paw crushing a frozen branch beneath its weight. The second and third rogues fanned out, flanking me on both sides, blocking off the narrow floor of the ravine entirely.

They closed the distance until I could smell the sickening stench of rot and copper on their breath. The lead beast lowered its massive, torn head, its black snout hovering inches from my bleeding neck. Its wet, black nose nudged the raw skin of my collarbone, inhaling the sweet, burning heat of my bloodline.

I closed my eyes, a single, hot tear cutting through the black poison on my cheek.

My body was broken. My wolf was awake, but my physical form couldn’t move a single muscle to defend myself.

The lead rogue opened its massive, black fanged jaws wide, aiming straight for my exposed throat.

This is where it ends, I thought, pulling a final, shuddering breath into my sore lungs.

Suddenly, a blinding, golden lightning bolt slammed straight down through the narrow slit of the ravine sky.

BOOM!

The force of the strike shattered the canyon walls, sending a deafening shockwave of stone and ice exploding across the gorge. The lead rogue was thrown backward thirty feet, its massive body slamming into the rock face with a sickening crunch.

The heavy smoke cleared slowly.

Standing in the narrow gap between me and the remaining two snarling beasts, his heavy obsidian cloak billowing in the sudden gale, was Tsar Vaelin.

He didn’t look back at me. He didn’t say a word.

He simply drew a massive, black runed broadsword from his hip, the steel igniting with a terrifying, pitch black flame that swallowed the dark.

He tilted his head toward the two snarling rogues, his deep, gravelly voice echoing off the canyon walls like the toll of a death bell:

“Touch her, and I will feed your souls to the ice.”